What is the key distinction between generative and agentic AI?

What is the key distinction between generative and agentic AI? Generative AI focuses on creating content—text, images, audio, code—only when prompted, while agentic AI emphasizes acting autonomously toward a goal. A generative model like GPT-4 produces a marketing draft and stops. An agentic system wraps such models inside a planning loop: it monitors data, decides next steps, calls external tools (APIs, emails, trades), and iterates until objectives are met. Thus, generative AI supplies information; agentic AI orchestrates decisions and real-world execution—often using generative outputs along the way.